Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/24

10 moulder on the surface of untravelled lands, or in the ruins of deserted cities.

Now, in regard to Composed Literature, it is obvious that its subject-matter is far too vast for the scope and limits of archaeological research; it is chiefly with its manuscript text that the Palæographer has to deal; his business is to collect, decipher, collate, edit. Printing transfers the text from his hands to those of the philologer, the historian, and the critic.

In dealing with the Literature of Documents, the Archaeologist has to do more than barely edit the text. On him, in a great measure, is devolved the task of interpretation and classification; the mere deciphering or printing the documents does not at once render them accessible to the general reader, nothing but long familiarity, acquired in the course of editing, can give dexterity and intelligence in their use. It is the business, then, of the Archaeologist to prepare for the historian the literature of documents generally, as Gruter has edited his great work on Latin inscriptions, or Muratori the documents of medieval Italy.

He must as far as possible ascertain the value of this unedited material in reference to what is already incorporated with printed literature, how far it suggests new views, supplies new facts, illustrates, corroborates, or disproves something previously acknowledged or disputed; whether, in a word, it will contribute anything to the great mass of human knowledge which printing already embodies.

Composed Literature should be as far as possible confronted with those written documents which are, in reference to it, vouchers, commentary, or supplement. Sometimes we possess the very materials which the historian used; sometimes we have access to evidence of which he had no knowledge.

Now, it is needless to insist on the historical value of such documents as the inscription of Darius on the rock of Behistan, the Rosetta stone, and the many hieroglyphical and cuneiform texts which the sagacity and learning of a Young, a Champollion, and a Rawlinson have taught the nineteenth century to interpret by means of these two trilingual keys.

Such evidence speaks for itself. When in the laboratory of the philologer and the historian these documents shall have been slowly transmuted into composed narrative, we may hope to contemplate the ancient world from a new point